* Book five was published in 1562, nine years after Rabelais’ death. Probably the first fifteen chapters were left by Rabelais;31 the remaining thirty-two are of doubtful authenticity.
* A prose translation seems better than an awkward forcing of rhymes and idioms into alien forms: “When you shall be very old, seated at evening beside the fire, chatting and sewing by candlelight, you will recite my poems, and marveling will say, ‘Ronsard blazoned my name when I was fair.’ Then no one of your helpers, though half lulled to sleep by the murmur of their looms, but, hearing these words, will rouse themselves at the sound of my name, blessing your fate to have such deathless praise. I shall be then beneath the earth, a phantom without bones; I shall be taking my repose beneath the shade of myrtle trees. You, an old woman bent before your hearth, will then regret my love and your proud disdain. Live now, believe me, wait not for tomorrow; gather the roses of life that bloom today!”
* Alexander Barclay made a similar adaptation of Brant in The Shyp of Folys (1509), adding some Scottish darts of his own.
* “Little Lazarus,” referring to the beggar of that name in Luke 16; then “little beggar”; then a boy leading a blind beggar.